[Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 4

[Ashwin Baindur]

Dear friends,

A reminder to you that work has begun on assembling a list of articles
suitable for a Wikipedia For Schools Offine Edition (Indian version). At
present, its a one-man effort (namely, me). It is located here :

http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Projects:_Wikipedia_for_Schools/Indian_version

The immediate reason for this is that the present version is tailor-made for
the UK schools curriculum. User Bozmo (creator of WPSOE) has indicated that
about 300 articles extra have been added for this reason. User Bozmo has
promised guidance to this project once the 2011 version will be released in
a couple of months time. In the meantime, if anybody feels that some
particular article on India should be added to the 2011 version, please
contact Bozmo immediately.

The aim of this endeavour is two-fold.  The first is to have an Indian
version tailor-made for our context and which will (hopefully) tackle all
the issues you all mentioned in the recent thread. The second is - to have a
framework of articles on Indian subjects. This list will help us to ensure
that core knowledge will be developed and brought up in standard. The same
list can be used to cross-check the articles in Indic-language wikipedias so
as to prioritise content needing development.

The methodology and progress are as indicated :

1. Prepare list of topics of the latest version of Wikipedia for Schools
(SOS Children's Village Project version - html download). (Done)
2. Count them. (Done).
3. Check each section's topics for relevance and : (Yet to begin)
    * Delete articles pertaining to British/North American cultural contexts
irrelevant to the Indian context.
    * Add articles relevant to the Indian context.
4. Prepare list of desired topics from a set of textbooks in CBSE and
countercheck availability on Wikipedia for Schools - Indian version.
5. Get list counter-checked with the Learning Lab's semantic and phyllogenic
web (proposed).
6. Get domain experts in each field to cross-check if any important topics
left out.
7. During the process (steps 4 to 6) get peer review.
8. Censorship (as required).
9. If Wikipedia for Schools occupies less space, add articles. If Wikipedia
for Schools exceeds size of DVD then trim number of articles.
10. Compile the offline version - humungous task.
11. Trial deployment.
12. Usability testing.
13.Release version 0.1.

Comments and participation welcomed. All of you are requested to please
contribute timely so that issues can be sorted out during the procedure
rather than having to redo the work afterward. Since this is an Indian
initiative on English Wikipedia, I am using this post to inform all of you,
as has been suggested earlier - get the relevant language wikipedia
community in the picture.

Warm regards,

Ashwin Baindur
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